


Hliðskjálf

by 5ofSpades



Category: Norse Religion & Lore, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dark, Community: norsekink, Dubious Consent, Dubious Morality, F/M, Fantastic Racism, Helheimr | Hel (Realm), Hliðskjálf, Intersex, Jotunn | Frost Giant, Jotunn-Brain-Powered Super Computing, Loki's Head in a Jar, M/M, Mpreg, Non-Graphic Rape/Non-Con, Odin's A+ Parenting, Thor's A+ Parenting, Æsir still are Delicious
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-15
Updated: 2014-06-13
Packaged: 2018-01-02 22:49:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 17,757
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1062580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/5ofSpades/pseuds/5ofSpades
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Odin left Thor a realm to rule, and three treasures to aid him:</p><p>The high seat of Hliðskjálf from which to see all, the spear Gungnir which would never miss its mark, and the head of the most powerful seiðmaðr of Asgard to serve as a private well of wisdom, its owner raised and shaped from infancy to complement the new young King.</p><p>AKA the story where Thor is King and Loki's head in a jar keeps him in good/bad company.</p><p>- Last chapter used for illustration practice updates.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Life

**Author's Note:**

> Norsekink Prompt:
> 
> Advisor to the King - Thor, Loki's Disembodied Head. Thor/Loki?
> 
> Despite what most AEsir have been raised to believe, the Jotnar race has produced many fine scholars and thinkers.
> 
> The King of Asgard is strong, unwavering, all-wise. So much so that the people believe while he has advisors, he does not really need them.
> 
> But that is not true. For to see all the realms and rule over them is taxing, and cannot be done alone.
> 
> When Thor finally takes the throne, Heimdallr shows him a jarred frost giant head (ala Futurerama style), the head of Mimir the wise, database, encyclopedia, secretary, advisor, and confident to the lonely King. For even if unwilling, a Jotunn head, once cut off from its dead body, cannot lie, and must do what its owner bids. But now with Odin gone, the head sleeps.
> 
> But worry not young King, for your father had long prepared a head just for you, its owner raised and shaped from infancy to complement you.
> 
> +1 Loki's head is still ever bitter and biting (literally) and sarcastic.  
> +1 Truths from Loki's mouth hurts more than his lies, for he sees deep into people, and the hearts of gods and men are often ugly places.  
> +1 Instead of fishfood ala Futurerama, Loki head eats the King's blood.
> 
> TLDR: Odin got Mimir's head to turn to for advice. Thor gets Loki's talking head in a jar as his coronation present, to be his well of wisdom.
> 
> **
> 
> The main pairings of this fic:
> 
> Thor/Suffering > Thor/Loki > Thor/Loki's Head in a Jar = Thor + Magical Magpies(wtf?) > Thor/Everyone Else

A King walked down his golden hall, his beard peppered with snow, his strides steady and dignified. His hands gripped firmly but lovingly on the shoulders of two boys, one dark and one fair.

“Though the paths of your futures may differ, both of you were born to be kings, my sons,” the King said to his two Princes.

One boy blinked and bit at his lower lip in confusion, while the other scrunched up his brows in thought.

**

Asgard’s Prince was solemn and dignified, as he watched Odin’s funeral boat lit afire, and dropped down the edge of the world to follow where Frigga went all those years ago.

After the AllFather’s image was remade in the heavens as bright new stars, Thor was ushered to the throne room to be crowned, for Asgard could not be even for one day without its King, and the nine realms without its AllFather.

When Thor sat down on the high throne of Hliðskjálf, he understood what was meant by the sight to see every corner of the nine worlds all at once. In that moment his spirit soared, and was the mystical Father figure of old, ever watchful, ever vigilant, a guardian to all the children of the worlds.

From the rafters glided down two lithe birds, one held a pair of gloves in its beaks, and the other a belt in its claws. They circled Thor, dropped the glove and belt onto his lap, and landed on his shoulders, one side each.

The all-seeing Heimdallr bowed low to his new King, “With these gloves and belt you would be of even greater strength, to better protect the realms placed under your sovereignty. With these birds your hearing and sight would ever be extended, as they repeat the whispers of the worlds in your ears.”

That was when Thor realized with his Father gone, Huginn and Muninn have also disappeared. These two birds were decorated with white when the ravens were dark as midnight, chatty when the ravens were dignified, a pair of darting and playful magpies.

**

Thor made a good King. Refreshing where Odin’s ways were old. Kind where Odin was stern. Full of passion where Odin was cautious and self-serving. He ruled justly over the lands, and was much beloved by his people.

From the seat of Hliðskjálf, he spied the dark buds of war and strife, and pre-emptively put ends to them. Through the whispers of the two magpies, he heard the horror tales of disaster and suffering, and moved Asgard’s forces to help save and better lives.

But when the King slept, he dreamt he was a boy again. Tall and unbending was his Father’s heroic figure, and soft was his mother’s arms and fragrant her hair. And young Loki’s smile was shy yet bright. His voices whispered of wonders he’d seen and secrets he’s spied in his big Brother’s ear.

But one night the dream turned into a nightmare. His Father was nowhere to be found. All that was left of his mother was her loom and a tress of her hair. His Brother shrank into himself, small and scared.

“Big Brother, big Brother, please help me. It is so dark and cold and alone in here.”

The boy Loki then turned into a magpie and flew away. Thor chased the bird down, just as he had chased his Brother in life. The bird led the King to the golden throne, and pecked at its solid base. Peck, peck, peck, went the little bird.

Thor came to with a start, and realized that he was in his small clothes, standing behind the seat of Hliðskjálf, with one magpie on his shoulder and another pecking at the throne. Peck, peck, peck, went the relentless bird.

“Listen closely now AllFather, there is a secret underneath your golden seat. I will instruct you on how to open it,” the magpie on Thor’s should said, its tone oddly familiar.

With the bird’s instructions, Thor twisted carving and touched indentations in turn, and with a click and a whirl, a panel lowered and gears turned. In the base of golden Hliðskjálf was a dark cavity, and slotted into it tightly was a crystal jar filled with fluids.

Fixed inside the jar was a familiar head, a head Thor thought long lost and torn apart by angry citizens on that dreadful day.

**

When the traitor and usurper Loki was revealed by Odin King, captured and brought before the throne, he was judged no longer worthy of life by the King with a heavy heart.

All of Asgard rejoiced at the stroke of the executioner’s axe, as the snake in their midst was finally slayed, its head rolling across the dirt, and its black blood filled the waiting stone trough. All of the capital showed up to cheer the death of its false son, save for one man.

Crown Prince (the only Prince all along) Thor sat alone in his room. He had already lost his mother. Now he must lose his Brother too through the man’s own treachery and hunger for power. Oh but his Brother. His baby Brother who chased after him on chubby legs, whose eyes shone with admiration for his brave older sibling, whose laughter ran so clear and merry, whose wits were wily and arms true when he had once fought by Thor’s side. His Brother, his poisonous Brother who spat hateful slanders and venom at the congregation of gods, ruining his last chance at any pardons that Thor had tried to beg for.

**

Thor reached for the jar and held it in his trembling hands. He would have dropped it, had he been of lesser mettle, when Heimdallr, the realms’ other watcher’s voice rang clear from across the hall.

“When I saw the birds rouse you, I knew this day would come, and I would have to tell you the truth, as a King is due. Put the filter device down, and listen if you will, my King, to a tale that your Grandfather told your Father once upon a time, and before that his Father to him,” the guardian strode through the grand palace doors and said.

Thor held Loki’s head closer to his own breast, but slowly nodded for Heimdallr to proceed, his face torn between anger, confusion, and grief.

**

No one knew exactly when Asgard had risen from the ethers, to become the golden realm that it is today. No one knew who created Hliðskjálf for a King’s throne, to be sat upon and used to survey all that he ruled. Some say it was the Dvergar with their crafts of old. Some say it was the Vanir with their sorcery. Yet others say it was created by the Norns themselves, a gift for their favoured land.

Through the seat the ruler could survey all the worlds, and let no man conspire against him, let no secrets be hidden, no injustice undiscovered. Wise were the Kings who sat upon this throne.

Wise were the Kings who sat upon this throne. Kings they were yet they were also men alone. The miseries of the realms were infinite. The dangers that lurked upon the Tree multitude. How was a man to contend with them all?

Upon the seat the ruler was respected by all the worlds, and strong, unwavering, and all-wise was he. No one could surpass his wisdom, and all his advisors bowed to his insights, his people his rule. Respected were the Kings who sat upon this throne.

Respected were the Kings who sat upon this throne. Kings they were yet they were also men alone. The solitude of their heights filled their hearts with loneliness. The cold of the seat filled their bones with chill. How was a man to guide them all?

No one knew who first devised the clever proposal, to add a processor and filter to the throne, and give the King of Asgard aid but most importantly respite. The cleverest craftsmen and the most knowledgeable seiðmaðrs gathered to create such a device, but to their dismay they could neither find nor forge something powerful enough to review and sort and understand so many happenings across so many realms.

Some say it was by chance. Some say it was by dark magic, but a suitable material was finally one day found: the brain of one who is wise and learned enough to be a King in his own right.

This was discovered in dark and desperate times, when Asgard’s power was not yet absolute, and her enemies numerous and ambitious. The then King’s brother had volunteered, a Prince trained to be held in reserve for the throne. But the King could not sacrifice his own brother on good conscience. He looked across the realms, and saw that the beasts of Jötunheimr were not without their learned sages and wise scholars. These creatures of one of the eldest races knew magic and politics and understood the hearts of men. So by his decree one such wise-man’s head was taken, to be enchanted and made into a filter, database, encyclopedia, secretary, advisor, and confident to the lonely King. All the better, for even if unwilling, a Jotunn head, once cut off from its dead body and enchanted to animation, could no more lie than sprout legs and walk, and must do what its owner bids. 

The heads under the throne were changed with every new King, each carefully selected to complement his weaknesses and strengths. The line that sat the magic throne grew more powerful and prosperous with each generation, until they were considered chiefs and their people gods in their might. 

You must recall the rumours that Odin your Father had in his possession the head of Mímir the wise. The rumours for once were based on truth. But now with Odin gone, the frost giant Mímir’s head sleeps in eternal rest.

But worry not young King, for your Father had long prepared a head just for you, its owner raised and shaped from infancy to complement you faults and strengths.

**

Thor did drop the jar in surprise, when Loki’s eyes flew open, and the disembodied head broke into a maddeningly wide grin.

The magpies spoke in the Thunderer’s ears, two voices merged into one, his Brother’s voice.

“You are late as usual in figuring things out, Brother. Must I show you everything myself? Ah, but then you must be glad. You no longer need to threaten to kill me should I betray you. After all, even the AllFather in all his power cannot put to death again someone already killed. And just as the nine-mothered-one said, bound to the interests of the golden realm as I am, the animated head of a Jotunn beast, I am no longer capable of lying to its High King. Drowning in the shadows of your light had I been in life. Serving in the shadows beneath your throne I am now doomed to in death.”

**

“Where are you going?” Loki’s head asked with suspicion and a hint of panic as Thor set to wrap the jar in a soft cloth.

“To the morning court. Where else?” the King answered as he contemplated the deepest corner of his closet.

“Then why are you leaving me here instead of carrying me to my place inside Hliðskjálf? And take this confounded cloth off me! I am not a piece of furniture to be hidden behind dust sheets! No not the box! Take me out of the box!” the head raised its voice in an undignified squeak.

Thor answered before he shut the lid, “Peace Brother. I wish not for nosey maids to find you in this state. I will be back when court adjourns at noon. Are there any foods that you wish to eat? I will have the kitchens prepare your favourites and bring them to you myself.”

“Fool! Do you see any digestive system still attached to my person? As expected, so many seasons a King, and still arrogant and brash as ever. You cannot hope to sit the throne of Hliðskjálf alone, especially not with your simple mind. Take me with you!” the head screeched.

Thor simply closed the lid, locked the box, and covered it carefully with his spare cape after he pocketed the key.

**

A fire ravaged the dry forests, and the flames danced and lapped at the edge of a small town as its people fled.

A man was robbed of his wallet by three callous youths.

A woman sobbed as her husband and provider ranted and raved in his drunken rage, taking out the abuses suffered at the hands of his foreman on his own children.

A newborn took his first breath as his mother lay dying from infection.

A house toppled into the sinkhole underneath, no longer held by changed geography. The owners of the house were crushed and trapped, but could find neither quick rescue nor quick death.

A crying child was saved from a fire.

A typhoon raged as rain poured down and corpses dragged out to sea by the waves.

A man fell over dead after his last breakfast, old age finally catching up with him.

A doe trembled in fear as hunters closed in on her with knives in hand. Her child! Her new-born child!

A rocket launched for the heavens as people cheered.

A pair of brothers bickered over their father’s inheritance.

A child’s face was streaked with tears as he was forced to kill his own parents. Stone-faced rebels watched at gun-point. Another soldier for their noble cause.

A prisoner was beheaded.

A group of students poured water onto a beached whale.

A healer shook her head as the patient’s relatives cried and wailed. People grew sick and died every day, even when their fellow men tried to stay death’s hand.

A band of Vanir councillors planned treason towards their King, for taking a consort that none approved of.

A mother divided out a deliciously cooked dinner to her family.

A youth howled in pain as his mentor called for healers. Another day, another accident at the forge.

A rain of bombs exploded upon a civilian population center, killing thousands.

A group of well-groomed little girls laughed as they kicked a single girl boxed in between them, their childish cruelty bringing them pure delight.

A lady, advanced in her age, was helped across the street.

A boy wailed, his skinned knee clutched in his hands, as his mother fret and doted.

A million beasts choked as they swam in poisoned waters. The stewards of their shared planet pumped waste more into the ocean without a second thought.

A young man cried into his bottles at an inn after his love abandoned him.

A classroom of students sat, eager in their thirst for knowledge.

A family huddled together as the piece of ice they were on drifted off into the sea, carried by fast freezing currents. Their planet grew warmer yet with the Casket gone.

A coal mine collapsed.

Nine whole realms. More lives than the stars in Asgard’s sky. Each one bright in its own beauty and splendor. Each one not without its own misery and loss.

Thor stumbled away from the throne, panting in disbelief, as the general strife and everyday misery of the realms overwhelmed him. The first to break was not his mind as Loki’s head had suggested mockingly, but Thor’s compassionate heart.

Sif questioned her friend and King’s well-being with concern. Fandral and Volstagg helpfully lent him a steadying hand. Thor excused himself from court, citing too much drink from last evening’s hearty revelries.

**

Thor retired to his chambers, only to find his closet rifled through, the box dragged onto his bed and already open.

Loki grinned up at him mockingly from his jar. A magpie twisted its head as it landed next to the box, a lock-pick held in its beaks.

“See Brother, you are not wise or strong enough to be a proper King. Would you stuff me away in your pride, and make the whole nine realms suffer an incompetent’s rule?”

I did not take you away from under the throne out of pride. I did it because it was not right. It was not right. Thor thought.

**

Thor sat regally upon Hliðskjálf. His eyes seeing only events that mattered to the prosperity of Asgard and the stability of the realms.

The voice that whispered to him spoke loud and clearly now, his Brother now his constant advisor and voice of reason. Firm when he wavered. Diplomatic when he was blunt. Ruthless when he was soft. Rational when he was filled with rage.

The AllFather also was not the sort of monarch who only sat content upon his throne. The King and his magpies walked the land, though his trips were quick and short, and each time he had to hastily return to Hliðskjálf.

Short as these trips were, they were ever fruitful. Here he helped a farmer rein in his spooked oxen. There he arrested a band of bandits preying on the weak. In green forests he danced with charmed Álfar maidens during diplomatic trips. Below dark mountains he asked the Dvergar smiths respectfully of their crafts. In his mother’s homeland he visited the monument to the heroic Queen, a great diplomat and bridge between two people and realms in life.

All praised the AllFather. None saw the tears at the corners of his eyes, when the magpies whispered with Loki’s voice into his ears at night, bringing dreams of youth and happier times. 

None saw the cracks upon his generous heart, when truths from his Brother’s lips hurt more than his lies ever did, and revealed to him the hidden darkness in even the brightest souls.

For the magpies spied the farmer cheating with his neighbour’s wife. The head showed him later how the bandits were released through corruption and bribes. The maidens were innocent of face but pragmatic at heart, and each wished to snare a King of Asgard with her charms. The smiths were respectful to a foreign King, but cruel and exploitive towards their apprentices and slaves. And the smiling Vanir ladies who showed Thor his mother’s old rooms had jealous and ugly hearts, and talked of how easily Frigga won godhood and fame by spreading her legs for a conquering King. So Thor really could not fault the magpies for ripping out their hair and pecking at their eyes.

**

At the high throne of Asgard there were two High Kings, one true and brave, the other intelligent and resourceful.

The skalds, had they known of the King under the throne, might have sung of poetries of light and dark, good and ill, love and hate, truth and deceit, two sides of the same shared coin, things that perfect legends were made of.

But Thor knew better. His Brother complemented him so, because for Thor he was custom-made, a tool molded from infancy, his sole purpose in life and death to fill the AllFather’s shortcomings and gaps.

Lie-Smith Loki was called in life, yet his own life was the greatest lie. Not a Prince. Not a Son. Not a babe saved out of kindness and charity. An ingredient for a relic was all he was. In vain and foolishness had he chased, for affection and recognition that were never his to be had.

**

When the worlds aligned again, and the twists and tears in space dumped a contingent of angry and confused fire giants right in the capital’s general market, Thor was at the forefront of the warriors who rushed to subdue them.

The thunder god called forth pouring rain, but water sizzled and evaporated when they fell on the blazing forms of Múspellsheimr’s fiery sons. Swords and spear heads and arrows melted upon contact with their molten skins. Many Einherjars were burnt to cinders. Those who weren’t were pushed back by the giants’ oppressive heat.

As Thor howled his frustration to the sky, two black and white shadows whistled through the air and landed on the stone columns high above, safely out of the range of fire. A trickster’s voice whispered in the King’s ears, of directions to herd the giants into the closest large windowless storage room, to which Thor complied, knowing that his Brother must have some cunning plan, just as he did during their adventures in life whenever Thor’s brute force failed.

Once the giants were all inside, the King led his men out. A magpie dived inside the room. A gust of wind blew the door shut right on its tail. A flare of green light flashed briefly from underneath the door, reminding some of the senior guards unnervingly of a certain Prince and traitor’s trademark sorcery.

The other magpie fluttered down on the King’s shoulder, and asked him to ready a rain of spears and arrows from above, and to strike the roof from the building with his thunderous hammer.

After the roof was gone, and every archer and cavalier emptied their quivers and spent their spears, the Æsir looked into the room and found every giant dead, their fires snuffed out, their folded over corpses like porcupines. A magpie danced from spear shaft to spear shaft as if surveying a job well done.

“I removed all the oxygen from that room and snuffed out their life flames. Are you to chastise me for using cowardly magic and paltry tricks now, Brother?” the magpies first preened, then as if remembering unpleasantries from post-battle banterings past, snapped at Thor, who shook his head, stroked their silky feathers in thanks, and silently voiced his gratitude to the Norns for returning his Brother to fight at his side again.

**

“Thank you for rescuing the capital and all my men from the giants’ fire, Brother. Your sorcery and quick thinking saved the day,” Thor said to the head at his bedside before he went to sleep.

The head rolled its eyes, “I am not your Brother. For all these past years I’ve worked myself to the bones to help you rule, yet you only think to thank me now? As usual, your recognition is too little and too late. And I certainly did not save you sorry lot out of free choice. I was enchanted to aid the realm and King, remember?” 

“But our people are grateful, and -”

“Your people are grateful. To you. The Norns forbid that they actually notice the helpful shadow, so blinded are they by your light,” the head cut Thor off with a bitter snort. “I on the other hand remember clear as day how the lot of them cheered and jeered and threw everything from rotten vegetables to stones at my person before this head was parted from its body. I also recall how much joy some of the Einherjars found in beating me senseless while I was bound and muzzled in my cell, my dear Brother nowhere to be found. A good thing that some of them got what they deserved today.”

Thor fell into silence, for what more could he say?

But the head still allowed the AllFather to pet its hair, and didn’t even make any attempt at biting his fingers.

**

Over the clouds and across fields of stars the magpies flew.

They soared over Asgard’s golden domes, hopped between Vanaheimr’s green branches, bathed in the clear bubbling streams of Álfheimr, snatched seeds from backyard birdfeeders in Midgard, dug under the darks rocks of Svartálfaheimr in the borrowed shapes of moles, dodged the ashes and fumes spewed forth from the volcanos of Múspellsheimr, skirted the gray edges of Niflheimr, and gazed upon from afar the halls of Hel.

But they never flew over Jötunheimr.

**

They never flew over Jötunheimr, until one day a group of hysterical parents ran into the AllFather’s halls, and with great wails and sobs begged for his help. Their young and witless sons had ventured to that frozen and hostile realm on a drunken bet, and had not been seen or heard hence. Are they dead? Are they still alive? Are there still bodies left to bury, or have they been devoured by the ravenous Jötnar beasts?

Worse yet neither the guardian Heimdallr nor the AllFather could see the youths’ whereabouts, so with a command from the AllFather, his magpies flew.

**

The magpies flew over a world with stark lines and shadows, one part charred and broken by the Bifröst’s fire. They skipped the dead lands and flew for white mountains and harsh tundra, frozen lakes and cold oceans. Instead of a wasteland they saw winter’s harsh beauty unfold over fields of snow and majestic glaciers.

Instead of savage beasts they saw seal skin huts, ice brick houses, and fur padded caves. Tall, broad hunters quartered and shared fresh games between households. Deft handed craftsmen tanned leather and fashioned tools from great teeth and shells and bones. Small children, only a little taller than their Æsir counterparts, laughed as they rolled down snowy hills and hurled snowballs. There were even a few adult runts in some of the settlements, shaping tools or healing the sick and injured with magic.

But none of these settlements were bigger than a mid-sized town. The land was vast even after the Bifröst’s devastation, strange how it was inhabited by so little people.

And the Æsir youths, they were nowhere to be found.

So southwards the magpies flew. The sun grew hotter, the land less snowy. Large parts were drowned by water melted from ice and snow. Tall crumbling stone structures could be seen, but no giants inhabited them. Dead forests wilted under the sun, with no beasts walking amongst the dried corpses of trees. The Bifröst brought sudden death from the skies, yet the confiscation of the planet’s heart, the Casket of winters ancient and deep, had already decimated the world long before.

Onwards the magpies flew, until at last they came upon what could only be the ruins of a city. Once upon a time it might have been grand and splendid, a marvel of civilization, but it had since collapsed under the fires of war and ravages of time.

In one of the largest structures the birds sensed the presence of a strong shielding spell, steady even after what it was cast to protect had long been gone. So into the dead halls they flew. Automated torches flickered on at the flapping of wings. Their fire illuminated the walls with a calm blue glow, and revealed stone carvings on the walls.

The magpies slowed down in curiosity. Here was a relief depicting Ymir suckling at the teats of the primordial cow. There was a carving of the great flood of blood that poisoned the land. The stony faces of Kings of old lined the walls, their equally icy consorts keeping them company in eternity. There were also scenes depicting daily lives, from lively hunts to lichen farms to bustling markets and great cities of ice and stone.

At last the magpies flew into a great chamber with a tall stone altar near the far wall. The sculptures lining the walls showed a procession of lords led by a regal King, a tiny babe held in his arms. The procession headed through a blizzard and towards the altar, behind which stood a wall with a grand carving of the World Tree. The nine realms hung on its boughs, empty indentations where great gems used to be, now dug out and stolen from these halls. At the root of the tree was a carving of an ice cradle, the babe climbing out of it to reach for the Tree. Upwards the child climbed, in each successive carving he was a little older than the last, until finally he stood tall and proud, a man in his prime next to the eagle at the crown of the Tree. 

The magpies circled behind the altar, and saw the lost young men huddled under the great stone construct, half faint from hunger and with tear streaks running down their dirty faces. The birds each gave a loud cry and dropped the two apples they carried into the young men’s laps. Then with a flap and a twist, they streaked like black and white arrows out of the crumbling shrine and sanctuary, and into the secret pathway in the sky.

**

The Bifröst was activated, guards were sent, and the youths to their homes safely returned with a stern reprimand.

The AllFather was much relieved to see families reunited. But while the head still did its duties, and the birds still shared their secrets, his Brother was otherwise quiet and pensive, a silent presence without his usual sarcasm and bantering for days.

**

The King was brave to face the burning demons of Múspellsheimr. The King was wise in besting the fire giants when none other could. The King was also kind, to help reunite lost and wayward youths with their worried families.

It was only right for a King so brave and wise and kind to have a Queen by his side, Thor’s advisors nagged.

**

When Thor was still a Prince, he had contemplated marrying his mortal woman Jane Foster. Loki, disguised as Odin, had cornered the Prince and cautioned him that though Jane’s will was strong and mind sharp, Thor should still take care. For her body was still made of mortal stuff, and would expire before it could bear any child of the thunder to term.

And before her love for Thor was her love for science. A lover and passion that even a radiant god cannot contend with.

All in all the wench would have made a very poor bride.

**

Thor married Sif in the end. A fitting warrior bride for the brave King of Asgard.

**

“I am the Father of twins!” Thor shook the jar in his excitement, and then hugged it to his breast in joy.

The head was not impressed, and with a smirk, it said, “The Father of one child, a daughter.”

“What means you Brother? Do you mean to curse my son, an innocent babe sleeping in his cradle?” Thor gave the head a harsh look, forgetting that unlike in life, Loki’s head could no longer lie or act against the interests of Asgard.

“He is not your son. Why look so surprised, Brother?” the head’s voice was full of mocking. “Why should you be free to dally with mortal wenches, yet Sif not allowed to reciprocate the attentions of other men? Had I been able, I’d lie to you only to reveal the truth later, after you’ve bonded more with the boy, just to hurt you more. But as I am, I can only speak the truth. Ask Heimdallr if you don’t believe me. Better yet, ask the master of the hunt, or your Queen herself directly.”

Ah, so now Sif, Sif who loved him throughout childhood, Sif who was the sword by his side and the shield at his back, Sif who was unwavering even when he choose a mortal woman over her, has left him too. Left him after Hogun took his leave for his homeland, Fandral finally started his own family, and him and Volstagg both grew more distant to their King, so unreachable and powerful was he on his high seat.

Funny how just as his Brother was his first friend, he was the last one to stay with him too. Thor reflected as he brushed Loki’s wet dark locks, and submerged his lower face into the jar to place a kiss upon his Brother’s cold and clammy forehead.

**

The son was named Ullr, who grew to be a great hunter and archer. Thor treated him as his own, but it stopped not the whisperings of the court, for the boy looked nothing like Thor, and Sif’s dalliances now an open secret.

The daughter was named Þrúðr. She would have been the very image of her Father, had her not been wean and sickly. Her hair, instead of having a rich golden shine, was pale and dry, her skin pallid and bloodless. In her sickness the meaning and well-wishes behind her name were but cruel mockeries.

Neither was suitable for inheriting the throne.

**

While her nurses and tutors taught Þrúðr all the womanly arts, so that one day she would her chosen lord and husband better serve, the Princess was more interested in the intrigues of court and politics better left to men. She sat at her Father’s knees as a girl while he held court, listened with wide, attentive eyes while he dealt out judgements and mediated matters. She stood by her Father’s side as a young maiden, whispering her observations and advices into the King’s ears. 

The magpies also took a liking to her. They left the Princess’s jewels and adornments well alone, despite the allure of their shine. Instead at her window sill they would leave gifts of berries or fruits. Sometimes instead of landing on the King’s shoulders, they would alight upon the Princess’s thin pale arms, and gently groom her straw-like hair with their beaks. To her ears they murmured of the great wide realms. Oh what wonders they hold. If only the sickly girl could into a bird be transformed, and fly with them to all the branches of the great White Ash.

But whatever wane hopes Þrúðr had of sitting upon the high seat one day herself were dashed years later, when her Father introduced her to her new baby brothers, who cried loudly with the aid of healthy lungs.

But when the night was dark, the halls quiet, and all the stars hid themselves behind their veils, Þrúðr would sometimes walk alone into her Father’s audience halls, and place her hand longingly on the seat of Hliðskjálf.

**

Þrúðr on occasions wondered why her Father kept a long steel needle and a candle always by his bedside. Sometimes she saw him touch his left index finger gingerly, as if it was itching from a recently hurt. Sometimes she swore she saw on his hand faded bite marks.

Drip, drip, drip, down dripped the AllFather’s blood, purest blood made of lightning and thunder into a jar.

The head within sometimes opened his thin ashen lips, and a pale stiff tongue would dart out to taste the fresh iron and rain mixed with the nutrient solution.

**

“I am happy to see you spend so much time with young Þrúðr, Brother,” said the King to the magpie on his shoulder.

“Hardly my first choice of conversation company. How many people do you think can actually hear me, Brother?” the magpie pecked at Thor’s fingers instead of the offered bread.

“Err they can’t? I thought you did not wish to speak to them.”

“Of course they can’t! None other than the King and his line could hear me! First I was lied to, then unjustly punished for but minor offenses -”

“You tried to commit genocide, attempted to take over a defenseless realm, and killed countless innocents!” Thor exclaimed.

“As I said, Minor Offenses! More giants have starved for the lack of their Casket instead of dying in Bifröst’s fires. A realm so weak deserved to be ruled. And how did you think Asgard managed to assert its hegemony all those eons ago? Yet when I, a frost giant, dared to do the same, I was humiliated and murdered and mutilated. Now I am stuck with but a fool and his sickly daughter for company!” the bird screeched, its black and white feathers puffing out.

“Now if you’ll excuse me, I have an appointment with a Princess to keep,” so saying, the magpie turned from the AllFather and flew away.

**

Despite her cursed body, Þrúðr was strong.

When she was held hostage by a vile necromancer and his Jötunn whore, who both harboured a bitter agenda against the house of Thor, the Princess had stayed calm and alert. And despite the pain from her injuries and the tightness in her thin chest, she neither begged nor made a sound.

The necromancer and the grotesque flesh and bones of the risen dead were cremated by a lightning strike from the AllFather’s hammer. As the necromancer disintegrated, so did his tiny Jötunn also collapse into pieces, its head rolling to a stop at Thor’s booted feet. That was when Thor realized it too was just a corpse called back to life, and recognized in its well-preserved round face the Jötunn he’d slain years ago, for daring to break into Iðunn’s orchards intending larceny and thievery.

The King’s daughter watched with an impassive face, a magpie held tightly in her shivering arms.

**

“Loki, Brother, I have been thinking, after our fight with that necromancer,” Thor said one day to the head.

“Oh, thinking? Well that cannot turn out well,” the head said snappishly.

“No Brother, I have been thinking. You clearly still possess your magic. And here you are, and here your head is, and I do know where your body is.”

“Where my body is? Was it not exposed to the elements and the angry populace as was a traitor's due , to be made a feast for vultures and jackals, and a breeding ground for maggots and flies?” the head sneered.

“No Brother! Of course not! Though I could not visit you in the dungeons or stop your execution, I snuck out the very eve after your death, took down your body from the city gate upon which it hung, rode out to the fields where we used to hunt and play in our youth, and buried you in an oak coffin under your favourite ash tree. I looked and looked for your head, but could not find it and thought it lost. But now here you are, head and spirit. With your great magic, could you not piece your head back upon your body, and return your soul to it? I would help you, even if it involves dark and forbidden arts. For I would rather hear the advice of my Brother whilst he sat by my side, than the whisperings of his head under my throne,” Thor’s face was one filled with wistfulness and hope.

The head broke out into a broken laugh that soon turned to a mad cackle. When it finally calmed, the words from its mouth chilled Thor to the core, “Your Brother is not here. His magic alone is bound to his head. His soul wanders where the dead goes, robbed of his seiðr and forever lost, a head without a body to govern over, and a body fumbling aimlessly in the dark without its head.”

“What means you by this vile lie! Silver-Tongue, Lie-Smith! This is but a poorly crafted falsehood. For is your spirit not speaking to me even now, trapped inside your severed head?” Thor raged at his lying Brother.

The head’s tone suddenly turned flat and emotionless, like that of the more primitive mechanical constructs made by the Man of Iron from long ago, “But I am not Silver-Tongue. I am not Lie-Smith. And I lied to you not when I told you I am not your Brother. Remember you not that I cannot lie?”

“I am database, encyclopedia, secretary, advisor, and confident. I am sword, shield, filter, and spy. I am a magical artefact created by AllFather Odin from the head and blood and death of a frost giant mage, my database backed by the mage’s considerable knowledgebase, my processing powered by his brain. My function and purpose are to aid and obey the ruler of Asgard, fulfil his desires if I could, and above all, act in the interest of the golden realm.”

“AllFather Thor, preliminary analysis revealed that you desire for me to interact with you in the manner in which frost giant Loki had done in life, and that was how I have acted, in exact accordance to your requirements. Should you wish for a different interface, please specify new parameters,” the head said in its monotone.

**

The Kings of Asgard have always been alone.

**

Thor ordered the head, the abomination, to never use his Brother’s voice again. Yet after a few days with naught but its monotone as company, he was missing Loki’s voice and sarcasm and wit with such aching pain, that he had to rescind his order, weak-willed fool that he was.

At least with the voice he could still pretend, even knowing that despite its enchantment of truth, every sentence from the head’s pale lips was a lie, finely crafted from dark seiðr and memories both painful and fond.

**

In a fit of lonely drunkenness one late evening, Thor proposed to the head that he could cremate Loki’s body and head both, a proper funeral pyre for a Prince of Asgard.

To which the head, in Loki’s voice, replied that he was never a Prince of Asgard, and cremating Loki’s corpse whole would not make his soul in Hel intact again, nor release it from torment. All Thor would achieve would be the loss of a useful tool. And has the foolish oaf already forgotten his failed attempt at mastering Hliðskjálf without its filtering device installed? Would his conscience truly rest after a meaningless proper send-off of his false Brother, when the nine realms would suffer by his act of useless sentiment?

“Besides, my King is clearly drunk. Here, have some herbal tea to calm and sooth you, and some bread to ease your empty stomach,” said the head in an imitation of exasperation mixed with simulated fondness, as a magpie nudged over a platter with a steaming cup and a loaf of soft buttered bread.

Thor took the tea and chewed slowly on the bread. He must be drunk. His Brother has not been this kind to him since their teens. But it was nice, and he was so tired. Where was his Brother anyway? He heard his voice, but saw not his form. Why was there a magpie on his desk?

The head might have also thanked Thor for saving Loki’s body from the elements and the defilation of the peasant populace. But Thor by then was too far gone to hear.

**

But after drunken nights came sobering mornings, and alcohol was a depressant, if what Jane once said was true.

**

If the AllFather’s face grew sterner, his demeanors grimmer, his judgements stricter, few have noticed.

Those who did contributed the changes to maturity and the burden of the throne. Ruling the nine realms was a demanding task. See the threads of silver in our King’s golden hair?

**

Although Asgard’s vault was said to be impenetrable, no one had in all these years managed to figure out where the Infinity Gauntlet, originally stored so safely in said vault, had disappeared to. Perhaps the traitor Loki took it while he was given the misplaced trust of the royal family. Our AllFather Thor is all too kind and sentimental by far, to still look so pained by loss whenever that snake is mentioned. People shook their heads and spat on the ground as they talked of the Father of Lies. 

The magpies however remembered no such deceit. For although the vaults were open to Odin, and sometimes Thor with his Father’s sanctions, the younger, darker Prince was never allowed in it without his Not-Father’s supervision.

With such tight securities in place, the magpies too could not fathom how the theft of the Gauntlet was performed, although they had, by browsing the head’s memories, a fair idea of the identity of the thief.

So when the Tesseract was whisked away too, they flapped about in great alarm and wasted no time in warning Thor of storms over the horizon.

**

Though there were nine worlds held upon the Tree, and their denizens well-recorded by scholars of old, the Tree was a vast existence, the nine mere fruits ripened by chance, hanging off its branches.

Amidst the white branches and inside the hallowed trunks, many other life-forms teemed. Some regal and benevolent, such as Dáinn, Dvalinn, Duneyrr and Duraþrór, the four elements carried upon their antlers as they nibbled on silver leaves. Some curious and darting, such as Ratatoskr who scurried up and down the Tree. But there yet dwelled also others, others who fed on the Tree of Life and gave nothing back, hateful parasites who wished for it to fall.

Thanos was one such existence. With the Tesseract, the last gem of power, now in his grasp, he would sacrifice the pure white Ash to his silent and eternal love, and plunge the worlds into a peaceful void.

**

Under the dim light of a single lamp, the head told its King a tale, of how a Prince without a realm to call home was brought to heel.

Thor hugged the jar closer and gently stroked his hand through damp raven hair, as the head shuddered and shook.

**

The AllFather and his army planned and prepared. They thought themselves ready.

But when Thanos and his thralls fell upon Asgard like a demon accompanied by a swarm of locusts, the power of infinity a glove fitted on the Titan’s hand, the golden realm found it was not ready at all.

**

Thanos slapped the magpie aside with a casual swat. The bird hit the wall of the grand throne room, and left a streak of blood as it slid to the floor.

“Insolent little runt. You’d submitted to me so quickly the last we’ve met, spineless and gutless coward that you were in life. What chance do you think you have now that you are dead? Less than a specter, with no will of your own! Are you so driven by your new master’s commands to be brave? A desperate puppet dancing on the AllFather’s strings?”

The magpie’s twisted and broken body twitched and reshaped itself with the crackles of realigning bones. Loki’s voice rang out loud and clear to the thunder god and the Titan, the only two beings in this hall that could hear him, “I do this for no master but myself, as repayment for your poor hospitality. I’ll make sure that you’ll never see your mistress death! Nor will you, sick parasite, be soon counted amongst those who are alive!”

So saying, the magpie flew at the Gauntlet yet again, vicious claws extended for the soul gem resting in its socket.

It was just as easily batted aside as before, but again and again the bird leapt up, relentless in its single self-appointed task, a storm of claws and feathers battering its enemy’s arms and face. And with this storm, ice rose from the floor and encased the Titan just as quickly as they were shattered. Icicle spears hurled at Thanos from thin air, only to break upon the Titan’s gem enhanced form.

The Æsir warriors, who thought the Mad Titan madder for talking to a bird, tried to seize their chance and attacked. Their efforts upon Thanos were no more than mere scratches. With a twist of his Gauntlet, a score of warriors were cut down at their knees. And unlike the magpie, they would not get up again.

Shaking himself out of a daze, having been thrown by Thanos as if he was no heavier than the magpie, Thor thought for a moment he saw in the bird’s vindictiveness and desperation his Brother’s face. With a gesture he summoned Mjölnir from where it was imbedded in the wall, after the Titan had swatted it aside before snapping Gungnir clearly in two. With a howl the Thunderer leapt at Thanos and rejoined the fray.

Another magpie, unnoticed by all, flapped through the giant hole on the wall left by the invaders’ war machines, and streaked up into the sky like a burning comet.

**

Upwards the lone magpie climbed, driven by something greater than the curse that bound it to Asgard, driven by something more powerful than the wishes of its King, driven by what felt like will and desire, fear and loathing, love and hatred all of its very own. Following the secret path shown by the carvings in that abandoned temple of Jötunheimr, of a Jötunn Prince baptized first by a cradle of ice, then a journey far and wide, the magpie raced up the Tree towards its crown, ignoring the burning pain as its other self was torn apart again and again.

**

A great flash of blinding light filled the hall, more dazzling than Asgard’s golden roofs and brighter than lightning. The shape of a great eagle dived down at the Titan, the eagle who sat at the top of the Tree.

**

The magpie that was attacking Thanos’ Gauntlet gave a victorious cry, as the gem of soul biding Thanos’s twisted essence to life and flesh came away in its bloodied and broken claws.

A cry cut short, as the Titan sent a blast of disintegrating energy right at its chest.

The magpie’s twin dropped to the floor like a dead weight. The journey to the crown of the Tree was taken too quickly and carelessly, and overtaxed even the seiðr of one as powerful as Loki Sky-Traveler. In the eagle’s light the little bird’s shadowed form turned to ash.

**

The eagle grabbed Thanos in its claws, and ripped into the Titan with its steel-sharp beak. A part of the Tree’s immune system given form, to it the powerful Titan was but a pest, his twisted soul a tasty snack to be supped on.

The Æsir shielded their eyes, unable to face the World Tree’s radiance. Even the AllFather, the most powerful of them all, had to look away lest he too be blinded by the bird of prey’s hallowed light.

When the eagle finally had its fill, and with a flash disappeared back to its resting place at the crown of the Tree, Thor tentatively turned his head, and saw the Gauntlet half melted into the floor, five colourful stones fused into its twisted metals, and the sixth lay like a discarded rock on the floor, its emerald shine caked over by streaks of magpie blood.

The twin magpies, which always regenerated after their “deaths”, were nowhere to be found. Thor could neither feel their presence nor hear their chattering voices. All that’s left of their involvement were the bloodied gem and puddles of water from melted ice pooling on the floor.

Forcing aside a sudden wave of dizziness, the AllFather swayed to his feet and ordered the warriors and Einherjars to fan out and scout the palace and capital, least the remnants of Thanos’ forces threaten the young and old. The throne room was safe, for both the AllFather and the watchful guardian Heimdallr were there to safeguard it.

With all but Heimdallr gone, Thor scrambled for the base of the throne, touched and turned the secret levers and buttons with trembling hands, and took out the jar, its occupant’s skin paler, cheeks and eyes even more sunken than he’d thought possible, 

Thor steadied his shaking, unscrewed the lid, and thrust his whole left hand into the jar.

**

He’d lost his Brother already to neglect and corruption, to insanity and death, he would not lose what little he has left of him as well!

The head opened its mouth and bit down hard around the offered hand, hard enough that its sharp incisors scraped against bones. Thor bit back a hiss of pain and kept his hand still, as the monster in the jar fed greedily upon the blood of a King, of an AllFather, its pale cheeks slowly regaining colour.

With a rush of dizziness, Thor could no longer ignore the wounds inflicted by Thanos, and passed out where he lay. When he woke in his own bed, it was by the twittering of two magpies and the gentle brush of their tail feathers upon his face.

“Welcome back, my King,” his Brother’s voice said. “Now by my own hands I am avenged. One of my greatest tormentor and foe finally vanquished at last.”

Loki was avenged, but does Loki even know? Lost and torn apart was his soul. And of his tormentors and foes, what about the house of Odin, whose men had lied and ignored and used him so? Thor’s initial relief at seeing the magpies again was replaced by a sense of bleak loneliness.

As if sensing his distress, one magpie hopped to groom Thor’s hair with its beak, while another nestled down on his chest, a warm and grounding weight despite the protests of his cracked ribs. “Rest Brother. You did well. The realms are safe. You are safe. I will take first watch, just as I have done on all our adventures of old.”

Thor’s vision was bleary, his lids heavy. He was so tired, and his Brother was by his side, his hand cording through Thor’s hair, his weight heavy by Thor’s side. In Loki’s familiar and comforting presence, the Thunderer fell back to a deep dreamless sleep.

**

Thor sat alone on Hliðskjálf in his golden hall, long after the last of his advisors excused himself.

The other realms whispered of a lack of heirs. The Thunderer was young and strong, but even he was not all powerful. See how the Mad Titan had brought him low and nearly destroyed his home? When the Thunderer is gone, for all who sit upon Hliðskjálf eventually will be gone, either by another like Thanos, or simply by the wear and tear of the seat’s heavy burdens, perhaps, perhaps leaderless golden Asgard could be made theirs? To pillage and plunder, to tear apart in feast, to be made ruin in revenge? For Asgard had no heirs, no protector to take over the throne. Ullr was a lowborn bastard who possessed neither Thor’s blood nor power, and Þrúðr was a little girl frail and weak.

Knowing Sif’s affections for Ullr’s Father, Thor could no longer touch his wife, and left his friend since childhood to do as she wished.

Under the pressure of the court, Thor bedded Æsir and Vanir maidens bright and fair. But all the fruits of their unions spoiled and wilted before they could grow ripe, so powerful was the AllFather’s seed, and so weak the wombs that tried to nourish them.

**

Thor went to Heimdallr, and asked how his own mother Frigga had managed to bear Odin a son.

Heimdallr shook his head, and asked the King if he knew why the guardian and watcher was called the nine-mothered-one, and told Thor the tale of a most unusual birth.

To create a son so strong who could see so far, to be sentry and guard of the golden realm, the fetus that was to become Heimdallr was incubated in a different frost giant’s womb each month, the Jötnar being the only species strong enough to hold a god child created with such an unnatural gift. For nine months the fetus was nourished by nine giant mothers with their very own life-force, bursting forth with a shower of shattered ribcage and blood at the turn of each moon, only to be implanted into the next welcoming womb, until finally the horn-bearer was born.

And the line of the Æsir Kings was the same. Why my King, although the mother that raised you was the Vanir Frigga most bright and fair, the creature that bore you was a Jötunn prisoner, carried back to Asgard by the wise Odin. And Odin’s birth mother in turn was the giant Bestla, the sibling of Mímir the wise, whose head Odin’s Father Bör took to be his son’s personal well of wisdom. 

So strong was the blood of the Æsir’s most heavenly Kings, that only primal creatures such as giants could bear their children to term alive and in good health. But so strong also was the blood of the Æsir’s chief gods, that it washed out the ill frozen Jötnar blood, and all the royal line birthed with fair countenance and golden hair.

I was born to fulfil three functions and three functions alone, to give the Midgardians knowledge and divide their houses in ranks, to stand sentry over the rainbow bridge, and to sound the horn when the end time comes. I have fulfilled the first task. At this post I would stand aloof and alone, with little company and never knowing love, until my last duty is upon me one day in future time.

Asgard’s Kings were also born to fulfil their own functions. Your Father before you had sacrificed much to keep the nine realms safe, and had his Fathers before him. What is the pain of a few, when the many are prospered by it?

Oh where is Odin King’s Jötunn prisoner now you ask? Nothing more than bone meal fertilizing the golden apple trees.

**

Thor threw up in the privacy of his own chambers, after partaking in the golden apples during a public feast.

A magpie carried a wet towel to the AllFather for him to wipe his face, and tisked at him in his Brother’s voice, “What a waste. What a waste. The precious apples, are they not to your taste? Son of Odin, grandson of Bör, the poor orphaned child of unfortunate giants. Yet what could you do? What could you do? How else would you use that cursed seat, to govern all the realms under Asgard’s hegemony? How else could you have gained your mighty strength, to safeguard nine whole worlds under your all-wise protection?”

Thor wiped his mouth after splashing his face with water, “We would abolish this sick system. Þrúðr is a bright girl and strong in her own way. I would make her my heir, and damn what they all say.”

The magpie merely chuckled.

**

The AllFather moved his court away to the summer hunting lodges, citing too-hot weather and the need for a change in scenery.

Before he went, he took Loki’s head from under the throne, stuffed the jar in a pouch, and added it to his personal luggage. Remember the woods we used to ride and hunt in, Loki? The King murmured to the corpse and imitation of his Brother Prince.

Heimdallr promised to watch over the realms in his King’s absence, but warned Thor that although his sight was far and his hearing keen, he was but one man without the ability to see everywhere and everyone at the same time, the ability which could only be granted by the throne, and harnessed by using the head of a scholar and King as filter.

**

The first few months went well. Thor conducted his court as normal, aided by reports from Heimdallr and the magpies, advised by the whisperings of his Brother’s voice.

Things went well, until a small band of Jötnar raided a border town by breaching the only weak point on Asgard’s wall, the part that the owner of a certain horse never managed to complete, shattered to a thousand pieces by Thor’s mighty hammer was his giant skull.

Into the town the frost giants rushed like an avalanche, while Heimdallr’s gaze was turned elsewhere and the magpies busy surveying another realm.

When the AllFather’s warriors rode into the town, all that’s left were wet and soggy ruins, mixed with blood and tiny pieces of flesh, first shattered by the giants in their frozen state, then melted to join in a putrid mess under the hot Asgardian sun. The bodies that were not first covered in ice and then crushed in sport were also in pieces, torn by great hands and great teeth, the most tender parts now digesting in the bellies of vile blue beasts.

The only survivors of the town, a Father and his son who left to sell their cattle in the closest city, fell to their knees in the bloody mixture and stared and stared.

**

Þrúðr fell ill, so stressed was her glass heart by the terrible news. Though the Jötnar had increased their harassments of many borders as the years went by, such devastation in Asgard itself was unheard of, swiftly were the Einherjar able to act pre-emptively with their King’s far sight.

Physicians streamed in and out of the Princess’s room, carrying needles and medicines with them, shaking their heads.

**

Thor placed Loki’s head again under Hliðskjálf, and sat himself upon it with a heavy and resigned heart.

Thor’s warriors rode out on their fastest war horses, and took revenge upon the raiding Jötnar band.

They brought back alive a small blue beast, a wicked seiðmaðr and seiðkona all in one. It was this creature’s spells that hid the giants from the border patrols. Such an evil creature must be properly killed by Asgard’s own scholars and mages, lest its soul come back to haunt living men. 

The magpies squawked in Thor’s ears, and Heimdallr gave his King a meaningful look when Thor went to visit the guardian. 

**

The torturers found out the sorcerer’s name was Járnsaxa, but got very little useful information from the Jötunn, who insisted its band came not at the behest of their lords or jarls.

“My band acted by ourselves and alone. My band leader’s sire was the giant who built your damned wall and received his payment in death instead of gratitude. You accuse us of cruelty and murder, yet we’ve only learned from the best,” it spat curses at the Æsir, its magic bound, its brows sweaty with fever.

Thor stared at the prisoner. Its flesh was crisscrossed with welts and scars, its legs twisted and broken. The claws on each finger and toe were torn out after it scratched out the eyes of an unfortunate guard. And the place between its legs was sticky with semen and blood, an iron pear of anguish stuck fast and deep.

Thor saw his own Brother in his mind’s eyes, headless, pale, and battered as the King’d last seen him, Odin’s glamour holding on with a vice grip even after the subject’s death.

Thor remembered how his Brother’s milky skin was mottled with bruises, and how his broken ribs shifted and poked at awkward angles despite Thor’s careful handling. The long fine fingers on clever hands were twisted and broken, never to be straightened again. The thin wrists and ankles were still trapped inside shackles soldered tightly shut. From the extra crevice between his Brother’s legs, once so familiar and soft, now made strange and stiff with death, the Thunderer found and pulled out a long piece of splintered wood. Thor’s eyes saw nothing but red as he recalled the whisperings of palace servants and guards, of ergi, ragr, wicked seiðkona and seiðmaðr, of the monster that could no longer hide behind its false skin fair, with its ugly deformities and perverse alien-ness exposed in plain sight. The Thunderer was long used to death and gore, yet still found himself violently sick.

Ah, but his little Brother was gone, and only flittering shadows constructed from memories remained. 

Yet the Jötunn prisoner, with its long black hair matted with sweat and grease and blood, its lean form dangling from iron chains, still made Thor feel the same nausea from that day, the day when he took down Loki’s body from where it hung in public display.

**

To better hide it from sight, the magpies enchanted the prisoner’s skin from blue to Æsir fair. The Jötunn was then muzzled and removed to a remote house in secret. The rest of Asgard was told their invader dead and fed to the dogs.

**

Járnsaxa healed quick and cleaned up nicely. Its sharp features, tall form, softly curling black tresses and familiar anatomy reminded Thor somewhat of Loki. Which made everything both harder and easier. When the King panted and spent himself between the prisoner’s legs, the AllFater’s seeds of life rushing into the giant’s alien womb, it was done with his Brother’s name upon his lips.

Járnsaxa did not struggle, so tightly tied down and confused it was over the AllFather’s proposal. Get and carry the áss’s bastard whelps to term peacefully, and the god would let their dam go free.

**

“So all of your seiðmaðrs are born small?” Thor asked of his prisoner one evening, with Thor sitting by the fire, and the small giant sitting by a drafty window covered by iron bars. The giant made a comely sight, dressed in a green robe trimmed with gold, with his hair a dark waterfall behind him.

“Not born small, but never grew. So much of our energies were fed to our seiðr, that those of us gifted with it would never be as tall as our other brethren,” Járnsaxa answered, his hands busy with the knitting of a quilt. Children of winter would not fear the cold, but even they still wanted for softness to rest upon.

“My turn for questions. You would let me go, truly, back to my sire and siblings? It is not some cruel joke to bait the caged beast?” Járnsaxa asked of Thor, his voice wavering.

“Aye. I swear upon my hammer that you would be freed after. I have made a bargain, and would not renege upon it,” Thor assured the Jötunn, who still looked skeptical.

“Could I take some of my children with me? Back to our proper homeland?” Járnsaxa pushed at the terms of their bargain.

“How many do your people usually bear at one time?” Thor looked at the Jötunn’s protruding stomach.

“We usually have two. But might whelp larger litters when food is plentiful.”

“If you birth more than two, then please take the extra children with you, and may they find happier lives in Jötunheimr. I would even return the Casket, should your new leaders swear blood oaths to serve Asgard, so that my children could live in better times.”

“For a famed slayer of giants, and one who holds the cursed title AllFather, you are all too lenient and oddly kind,” Járnsaxa told Thor. His eyes, transformed from blood red to liquid brown with Loki’s magic, reflected a hint of hope.

**

Thor held his sons with trembling arms. So small and fragile they appeared, yet both so full of life. Their pink faces screwed up as they screamed their first greetings to the world.

Such great effort they’ve spent in their birth, that both must have been hungry, Thor reflected. He brushed the midwife aside and strode into Járnsaxa’s little room. He’d seen how tenderly the Jötunn sang and talked to his stomach, and knew that he would not object to nursing his own.

You are now free. Our bargain met. You may go where you would, just as I have promised, wild son of Jötunheimr. Or perhaps you could stay with our sons. With your disguise none would know that you were not originally of fair skin, and I would make you a nurse, nay a consort even, in my royal house. Thor had meant to say.

The sight that greeted him wiped the smile of joy from his face.

Járnsaxa lay lifeless in a pool of blood, his skin dull blue, his stomach split clearly in two to make way for the boys in Thor’s arms. Two magpies alighted on his corpse. One inspected the entrails with great interest, as if it can divine the future from the slippery mess, while the other held one of Járnsaxa’s eyes between its beaks, red as blood and round as a grape. It swallowed the macabre morsel down in one gulp and flapped its wings.

“Sorry good sir, but your frost giant’s body was overtaxed. It was either for me to watch your two sons die, when you have explicitly charged me to deliver them safely, or sacrifice the beast to preserve your Æsir-looking children,” the midwife wringed her hands as she justified her actions to the disguised King.

Thor stood frozen as Loki’s voice whispered in his ears.

“Congratulations AllFather. Congratulations on your strong and healthy heirs. Come, put the little Princes upon their dam’s chest, there are still some milk here to be had, and it is warm yet.”

“Congratulations the highest of Kings. Congratulations on your Æsir heirs. We must now put the midwife to silence permanently, lest words leak out and people doubt the origin of your progenies, lest the peasants treat their Princes as strange and monstrous half beasts. I have already quartered and buried the jailors, the torturers, and all the guards involved. This old crone is the last one left.”

Thor moved towards the body with mechanical steps, put down his sons, who immediately sought out the still warm teats, and numbly reached for the bloodied knife held in one of the magpies’ beaks.

**

“I had promised Járnsaxa that he would be freed,” Thor put down his quill, rubbed his tired eyes, and muttered to the magpie standing on his desk.

“Ah, but he is free now. Unlike your poor, poor Brother, whose soul is forever torn into two, whose body was desecrated to serve his enemy’s realm, whose trust was naively placed and betrayed, and whose whole being is rightly caged by bitterness and rage,” the magpie said.

And unlike you, slave to the throne, slave to the realm. Look at how your golden hair is streaked with gray. The magpie didn’t say.

**

The AllFather, in his benevolence, returned the Casket of Ancient Winters to Jötunheimr and received the fealty of its coalition of winter lords, their King and its line long dead by Loki the Betrayer’s hands.

Some supported the decision, for it was an act of munificence, as befitting the righteous golden realm.

Most opposed it. Why give back to the cold-hearted beasts what empowered them?

But the AllFather’s sight was clearer than any man, his magpies have flown wide and far, and to his court and people he gave the evidence of Jötunheimr’s decay. How the old willingly left their tribes to die alone, to conserve what scant resources they could. How the young expired at their dams’ teats, hungry for milk that was not there. While the desolation of the slowly melting winter realm swayed but a few hearts, what the AllFather showed next made many reconsider. 

Desperation was fueled by desperate times. Even diminished, the Jötnar were giants and natural gods of old. And in their desperation they have started to branch out from Jötunheimr again, in search for land, in search for food, in blind search for means to extend their own survival, and failing that, at least execute terrible revenge upon the realm that pinned them down, the realms that stood by and watched in inaction, and the realms who were merely in their way. 

See you not of the border raids? Rare in Asgard, for the Jötnar fear our wrath. But see you not of our allied realms? Too many villages have my magpies flown over, only to see once thriving farms and mills frozen or razed to the ground. Although we have put any perpetrators caught to justice and chased more away, our forces are stretched too thin, and were often one step too slow even with Bifröst’s speed and Hliðskjálf’s sight. And the threat of death by combat or execution by a falling axe gave these beasts no pause, for staying back was to wait for a slow torturous death. We keep the Casket, a useless trinket to us, at all too steep a price.

By giving back the Casket, Asgard would be praised for its benevolence and generosity, and Jötunheimr would be livable again. With their livelihoods restored and families to raise, even beasts would hesitate before risking their lives. And have we not the Bifröst, to hold over their heads should they ever try to rebel again?

Only a select few knew Thor acted not out of mercy or kindness, or to force the Jötnar kind into swearing oaths of allegiance, but to ease his own guilty conscience.

Járnsaxa had talked so fondly of his barely remembered younger days, when Jötunheimr was aglitter with splendor, empowered by the magic of winter deep.

And the magpies, the magpies, how they have whispered of death and ruin in Jötunheimr at its lost Prince’s misguided hands, and a chance for the redemption of said Prince’s tattered soul, if such redemption even exists, by having his Brother set things right.

**

With the relations between Asgard and Jötunheimr tentatively mended, the AllFather travelled to the cold frozen land in search of the answer to one very specific question.

Where do the Jötnar go, after they are dead? And how does one reach there?

Thor’s reluctant Jötnar hosts pointed him the way to the primordial realm of Niflheim, near the roots of the great White Tree. Beasts such as themselves believed in neither mythical golden halls to feast in nor Fólkvangr field to rest, but a gray, gray realm made of death and decay.

Against the head’s better counsels, Thor set his mind on Niflheimr. Sighing in resignation, Loki’s head sent the magpies along, lest “the fool slips on a branch and falls so far, that even he would break his hard head”.

Down the branches the god went, with the two magpies as his guide.

Aftere seven nights and days, Thor finally reached a misty and cold realm. He trudged along a muddy gray road in a pale gray forest, and came upon a gray shore. A gray maid sat on a stool by the shore, gutting fish and singing to herself. Behind her is a bridge made of bones, swaying back and fore above a current made of rusty knives.

Thor went up to the maid to ask her of her name, and if she would let him cross. 

“Móðguðr I am called, my lord AllFather, and Hel my mistress. You are on the living shore of the river Gjöll, with the dead shore across from this bridge. I could not let you pass, not because I would not, but because I could not. You are still of the living realms yet, and the living cannot enter the world of the dead,” the maid said.

“Please, I seek my beloved and gravely wronged Brother, and the unfortunate dam of my twin sons! To apologize, if nothing else!” Thor entreated.

The maid took pity on him, and gave the god a tube with a piece of glass on each end.

“Take this telescope, and see if you spy what you seek on yonder shore.”

Thor took the piece and put it to his eye. Over the rushing gray waters he saw a shore of corpses, dead and rotting and moaning in pain. Souls stumbled listlessly on the shore, going nowhere for they were dead. Here was a woman with a hole for her missing womb, dug out by her rapist before he broke her neck. There was a man groping blindly in the dark, his head sawed off by his brother in competition for their father’s inheritance. Yet none of them were the Jötnar Thor was looking for, and the Thunderer recoiled in horror at the pitiful fates of the dead in Niflheimr.

The two magpies circled overhead, screeching and crying in distress. One landed by the AllFather, and in his Brother’s voice urged the King to hurry up the Tree and return to his land, lest he lost himself to Niflheimr’s dark ethers and gray mists, and prematurely join the hosts of the dead. 

**

A year before Asgard returned to Jötunheimr its Casket, the AllFather announced the birth of his twin Princes by a concubine, appointed Queen Sif to be their foster mother in name, and placed the young Princes’ cradles in his own royal chambers.

The boys grew, healthy and strong, one dark and one fair.

As their faces unfurled from the pudgy roundness of infancy, the AllFather saw in their features Járnsaxa’s form, his eyes dark empty sockets, his skin pale blue with the loss of blood, his body split wide open, the boys feasting on the spilled entrails after they’ve drank the milk in its breasts dry.

He moved the boys’ bed to a set of chambers all their own.

As their bodies grew strong enough to run and climb and chase each other in the gardens, and their minds clear and devious enough to break all the rules they could get away with and co-conspire in all sorts of pranks, the AllFather saw in their silhouettes Thor and Loki of old, always followed by the sight of his Brother’s face twisted in rage behind dungeon walls, the shape of his headless body swaying in the wind upon the city gates.

He assigned all of the boys’ trainings in arms and magic and statesmanship to drill masters and sages and tutors, citing his trust in his subjects and their expertise, and said he was busy when the boys came to him, tentative and hopeful, asking if their Father could show them how to ride the new ponies their sister has gifted them with.

**

As the winds blew fresh winter snow from Jötunheimr into Asgard, so did the AllFather grow harder and colder.

He resembled his Father, the great Odin, in both carriage and manners more and more each day, the courtiers whispered. A Father to all with a firm and strict hand, measured in his decisions, and firm his ways.

On high Hliðskjálf Thor steadily sat, looking over the worlds, where no man was honest, and miseries and injustices were without an end. But he was High King, he was AllFather, his duties were to the whole nine realms, and before his eyes the Tree entire. Sacrifice the few to save the many? Restrict freedom to ensure safety? Preserve the greater good by any means necessary? The Prince Thor from years ago would have balked at what the AllFather readily did today.

**

Þrúðr took great liking to the twin boys, who loved her stories and the workings of seiðr just as much as they loved to ride and wrestle and hunt. Unlike Ullr who spent most of his time in the forests and fields, shooting and riding with his own able-bodied and healthy friends. Unlike Father who poured all of his energy into his kingdom, but could spare no time for his children.

A magpie tweeted form its green tree branch. Under the tree the Princess sat, her younger brothers sleeping soundly with their heads pillowed upon her lap.

From the memories held within its host’s head, the magpie recalled a similar scene dated with an earlier timestamp, of a dam with golden tresses, and two brothers who sat at her knees, listening to her stories and lured to sleep by her soft lullabies.

Inside the halls Thor sat dealing out judgements for his people’s affairs, his realm the first and foremost on his mind.

A magpie hopped up to the back of the AllFather’s throne. From the memories held within its host’s head, the magpie recalled a similar scene also from earlier times, of a sire with hair peppered with snow, who held his family at arm’s length, the high seat Hliðskjálf consuming the man and left only a King in his place.

**

“But why? Why do I have to sacrifice one of my sons?! My innocent sons! If it is a Jötunn head that is needed, why wouldn’t any head do?” Thor’s pulled at his hair in grief in the dead of night, and whispered to the magpie sitting on his bed post. The two young Princes slept deep and sound on their shared bed in their own halls.

“You seek a head to be the shield and filter for the master of Hliðskjálf, and yet wonder if any Jötunn head would do? Age and rule have made you colder and more ruthless, but not any wiser, Brother,” the magpie shook its head. “Know you not who Mímir was? He was the uncle of Odin King, a foremost wise-man and lord of the frozen realm, well-versed in matters of magic, philosophy, and politics. And your grandsire Bör’s Jötunn head was cut from his own half-brother, trained from birth to be a competition to the throne, a competition which he had lost.”

“Had I not been plucked from my icy cradle from birth - aye, plucked, for it was a poor excuse your Father had made, that a creature of pure ice and cold could have possibly been killed by ice’s loving embrace - and grew up a magical runt in war-torn Jötunheimr. Would I still know about Asgard and its land, the Æsir and their customs? Would I be educated about the whole nine realms? Walk the hidden pathes of the Tree branches? Trained in the ways of a politician and diplomat? If the answer to all these is ‘No’, then what use would my head be to you?”

“So now you see, false Brother of mine, the head in the throne must be cut from the neck of a scholar and potential King. Better yet that the dead sacrifice be a mage also, so that it may further aid its owner’s aims.”

“Thor, I know you are disgustingly good, and I know you are foolishly dutiful. A good King like you would never let whole realms falter and suffer in exchange for one single life. And with Jötunheimr so diminished, its thin populations struggling to survive hand to mouth for so many years, where oh where would you find such a scholar, such a wise King to donate his head?”

“Besides, have you ever wondered why I am replenished by your blood? Why Bör used his brother and Odin his uncle? Why out of all the orphans and abandoned children of Jötunheimr, Odin specifically stole a son of Laufey, grandson of Mímir? Have you ever wondered, Brother, nay, Cousin of mine?” 

“The first AllFather took a random Jötunn’s head, but it soon rotted away after nary two years of use. Thirty some wise-men from the froze realm after, the ancient King’s brother consulted with mages and sages and scholars, and in their research found that a head connected and fed by blood might keep for years on end. So the brother Prince did bed a Jötunn mage, trained the child of this union, and gifted him to Hliðskjálf. This head kept until the end of the King’s rein. Of Mímir’s kinsmen you and the twin Princes are the last. So you cannot even do as Odin did, and raise a stolen whelp of related blood for the harvest of his head.” 

“So would you have your sons hunt the Jötnar for heads down to the last of their population, so soon after you’ve just forged peace with their frozen realm? Would you have your sons go down in history as terrible tyrants and instigators of more wars? I didn’t think so. So now of my two beautiful nephews, who shall be the heir, and who the spare?” the magpie cooed.

Thor grabbed the malicious magpie and crushed its windpipe before it could squeak, and stormed out of his chambers. He marched down the hall, through the balcony door, and into the open air, his rage and grief barely contained.

The same magpie soared across the night sky and came to a stop on top of the railings. It cocked its head, preened its feathers, and stared at the AllFather with its beady eyes.

Thor screamed. 

**

Þrúðr sat at her dressing table, brushing her hair.

The son of Lord Freyr of Álfheimr and Vanaheimr has just come of age, the courtiers said.

Our realms were last joined by a Vanir Queen upon the Æsir throne. Now it could be joined again one day by an Æsir Queen upon Vanaheimr’s second highest seat.

Þrúðr shook her head as she held back anger and tears. She was meant to be so much more than a bargain piece. But the AllFather sat in silence, a thoughtful and considering look upon his lined face.

**

What need was there for Hel, when the realms shown by Hliðskjálf each was a Hel by its own people’s making?

What need was there of monsters, when each man held a menagerie within his heart? Without honour, unworthy of love, violent, greedy, short-sighted and selfish, such was the nature of all living things. And all that was good, too, too quickly gone.

How could such anarchy be left ungoverned, such chaos unchecked? How could the AllFather trust the people of Yggdrasil’s nine fruits to their own devices, when they were made to be ruled? How could Hliðskjálf’s seat ever be left empty, and the madness of this world left unwatched?

**

“Only one of you can ascend to the throne. But both of you were born to be kings.” Thor recalled his Father’s words, when he told his own sons all but the same.

Aye, one of them would ascend to the throne. But the other one would in his services to Asgard’s people be no less a King.

**

“Why Father? I do not even know him! Except the rumours that he is both weak-willed and a drunkard!” Þrúðr screamed at the King.

“You are a Princess of the realm, just as I am its King. We all must make personal sacrifices to do our duties,” the AllFather stared ahead unblinking, his sight on the realms and not the young woman his daughter had suddenly become without his notice.

**

Þrúðr’s engagement was annulled, when Freyr’s firstborn son drowned by falling into a tub of mead. The councillors were deeply disappointed, but took no time at all to start speculating about Freyr’s second son, a toddler recently weaned from his reclusive mother’s teats.

Thor vetoed the councillors’ suggestions on a new engagement so soon after the last one failed with the lack of a living groom. 

But barely after Þrúðr had breathed out in relief, she heard from her handmaids that the King was to entertain Alvíss, a Dvergar lord from Svartálfaheimr. Freyr’s second-born was too young, but the powerful Dvergr lord with his rich mines and miraculous craftsmen and smiths might be a thing to consider. So whispered the enthusiastic court.

Between Daughter and Father a rift grew wider, to one day make them not Daughter and Father at all but Subject and King.

**

Instead of light and shadow, the Thorsons were raised as equals.

Instead of slowly but steadily nudging one Prince towards sin through a bitter feast of jealousy and pride, so that he would be ill-remembered and the taking of his head well-justified, the AllFather planned for a future hunting accident.

One beloved Prince would fall. While another would rise to be a King one day, to rule over the realm eternal, forever golden may it shine.

**

The AllFather no longer carried Mjölnir around.

The hammer has grown heavier yet of late. On his way to the feast halls, Thor looked at the lines on his face and the snow of his hair reflected in the polished golden wall, and frowned. The AllFather was getting old.

A magpie cheeped at the young Princes. They’ve snuck into their Father’s chambers while the man headed to yet another state function.

The boys made a beeline for the hammer lying at the foot of their Father’s bed. Magni grasped the handle near the hammer’s head, Móði put his hands above his brother’s, and together upwards they heaved. The hammer lifted, if only barely, from the ground.

The boys looked into each other’s eyes in disbelief, and great huge grins of happiness and pride broke out on their faces.

**

Thor neither praised nor admonished the Princes when the magpies told him of their attempts with Mjölnir.

The boys were one step closer in their readiness for the throne.

**

Thor went out alone on a ride to clear his mind. His boys would soon reach the age of majority, men instead of children in one turn of the moon. Equally strong, equally good, such worthy Princes, worthy of Mjölnir and more they became. Yet for the good of the realms the King must choose. He must choose which of his sons has to die.

Into deep woods the King rode, his mind consumed by duty, forgetting the day.

His horse however was troubled by more practical needs, and the beast would go no more when they came upon a stream. Thor got off the horse, meaning to let it drink and graze.

Before he let the beast go, he reached into the saddle pack to fish for his own water-skin for refilling. When his fist finally grasped around the thick leather, he felt a sting on his small finger. When he withdrew his hand from the pack, a tiny snake came out with it, its sharp fangs sunken deep into the pad of his flesh. 

One, two, three, Thor’s feet stumbled and legs swayed.

Four, five, six, Thor’s vision blurred and head swam.

Seven, eight, nine. Nine steps and the god fell down. Down, down, down like a felled oak tree.

Thor looked up through bleary eyes, and saw with relief two familiar figures coming out of the bushes. Relief that soon turned to confusion, as Asgard’s two Princes, sons of Thor’s blood, stood over their fallen Father, calm and impassive.

“You once said to us, Father, that ‘though the paths of your futures may differ, both of you were born to be kings’,” Magni held his Father’s gaze, his eyes unblinking. “At the time I thought it a paradox, for how could one throne hold two Kings?”

“Brother and I both thought long and hard. Did Father mean to break Asgard’s tradition, and have two men share power between them? Did Father mean for us to conquer another realm, so that we may be brother rulers of two worlds?” Móði flicked the knife in his hand.

“But now we know what you meant.”

“A King upon the throne, and another King under it. What a clever system.”

“Had Þrúðr not told us to flee after she found out exactly what is under Hliðskjálf during one of her late night walks, and exactly what our dear Father has planned for our coming-of-age gift, we would have never puzzled it out,” the boys, nay, young men, finished each other’s sentences.

“So Father,” Móði said with a bitter sneer, his tone the very same as how Loki would say ‘Brother’ in his last living years. “Out of my brother and I, who was to be the heir, and who the spare? Or are we both sacrifices to that twisted throne, tools birthed for the sole purpose of feeding Asgard’s golden glory?”

“A good thing then,” Magni said with an icy smile, his eyes cold and calculating, “that while Father is of the Æsir race, so much of him still came from Jötnar stock, and he be a trained King at that.”

**

Between the realms and amongst the branches of the White Tree two dearest brothers roamed, a great hammer shared between them.

**

Upon the high seat of Asgard sat a proud High Queen, a pair of great goats curled protectively at her feet.

She has resolved to be the last of the golden monarchs, and was hard at work drafting new legislations to abolish the throne. If the World Tree burns without a watcher from Hliðskjálf’s hallowed and cursed seat, then maybe the realms weren’t meant to be in the first place.

**


	2. Epilogue: After Life

Thor blinked open his weary eyes, and saw a gray sky above him. Gray birds flew by amidst gray clouds. Gray winds swept through gray tree branches. A gray doe stepped past the gray grass next to his face. His hair, once gold as sunray, once white as snow, spilled pale gray and limp under him. And Thor cannot feel anything below his neck but emptiness.

Thor did not know how long he spent lying there motionless, staring at the sky. The distant eyes and disgusted frowns from his two bright sons kept flashing before his eyes. The phantom pain across his neck as stinging as the day twin knives sliced across it. 

Now that he lay dead, his head parted from his body, which one of his boys sits the throne? Ah, but he had wanted to kill one of the boys. He had promised away his daughter’s hand to someone she barely knew. He had raped a defenseless prisoner. He had used his own Brother, at first to stem his own loneliness, then to further his own rule. He had driven all his old friends away with his aloofness, and played politics and a King’s game with real people’s lives.

What had he done? What had he done? Was it all a nightmare, first began when his Brother’s head fell from his thin shoulders, the horrors stretched on inescapably for all these years, only for him to waken with the clarity that death offered? What manner of monstrosity was the throne, when it ate up all of Thor, and left only the AllFather behind?

Thor did not bother to count the pale sun and moon that passed across the sky. Instead he imagined caring for and playing with his boys. Hunting and riding with them, teaching them swords and archery as he never did. His boys, whom he should have embraced instead of abandoned in Asgard’s grand but sterile halls. Whose faces reminded him of Járnsaxa’s bleeding corpse. Whose brotherhood mirrored that of another pair of brothers from long ago, one fair and one dark, laughing and chasing each other across a sunlit apple orchard.

**

One day when Thor woke, he was moving. He swung by his hair back and forth, back and forth like a pendulum, as a pair of skeletal legs made great strides beside him, and there was a harsh pull on his scalp with every swing.

Eventually the skeleton carried Thor to a jagged gray castle, through its white bone arches, and threw him down in front of a cold gray throne encrusted with bones.

A girl with a tall crown atop of her head inclined her head at him. Half of her face was lovely and fair, her eye green as verdant emerald. The other half was but white, white bones, a single point of blood red light burned from an empty dark socket where no eye could be found. Her posture was proud, her hair black and fell in both dead straw-like strands and luscious soft curls. The shape of her face and the smirk on her lips reminded Thor painfully of his Brother.

“Greetings Uncle,” the girl said. “How ironic that an AllFather ended in my halls, after an AllFather tore me from my Father’s arms and banished me here, merciless in his so-called mercy no matter how hard I’d wailed.”

Thor had wanted to know who she was, why she has called him uncle, and why had she been banished to this cold gray realm. But a tall thin shadow stalked forth from behind the throne, and Thor was caught breathless and staring in wonder. 

This was the shadow he’d chased across the realms. This was the shadow he’d searched for in his dreams all these years. The whispers from those scarred lips were advices that carried him through his kingship. The sneers upon those thin lips were the knives that cut him deep with disdain. Here were the long black tresses Thor’d stroked and kissed, as he held the severed head in his arms. And those eyes shone bright and green still in this near-colourless realm, and their gaze burned brighter yet straight into Thor’s tattered soul.

The shadow inclined his head slowly and stiffly upon a scarred neck, where head and neck stump were held tightly together by a bloody thread, caked with dried blood and thicker than the ones that once threaded through lying lips.

“Hello AllFather,” the shadow purred. “How nice of you to have a sudden regime change. I have been robbed of my magic by that cursed throne for so long, that I thought I’d forget how to use it.” So saying, the shadow waved his hands, and two green flames flared up dancing on upturned palms.

“I’d have my dear little Hela sew your head back for you too, to show my gratitude for finally dying and returning my magic to me. But alas, alas, my two cute little nephews had left your body to the bellies of beasts. Your flesh digested, your entrails devoured, and your bones shattered and scattered, never to be put together again,” The shadow caressed his own neck.

“But your current form could serve a good and wholesome purpose. Think of it as repayment for all my services rendered to the Asgard throne in life and death.” With this the shadow pointed to one side of the hall.

The skeleton turned Thor’s head around in its hand, and the once-AllFather saw endless grayish blue shadows emerge from the dark, each wounded and grotesque. Each a Jötunn he had slain in life. Leading the congregation was Járnsaxa, a gaping wound wide on his stomach, his entrails trailing on the floor. The dam of his sons hissed and bared his sharp white teeth, “You ordered my death and then neglected my sons. You had promised to take care of them. You had promised they would have no wants or lack! Rapist! Murderer! Oath-breaker! Which one of my boys were you planning to sacrifice for Asgard’s unnatural dominion, while the other condemned to weep upon your cursed and lonely throne? Was it Magni with his quick wit and fine midnight hair? Or Móði with his laughter like silver bells?”

“We are ever so bored and lacking of entertainments in the Hel realm,” the shadow giggled. “Why your head would serve as a very nice and sturdy ball for some rambunctious Jötnar games.”

**

In the dark gray of the night, Loki picked up Thor’s battered head from the fields and carried it to his own private chambers. He washed the dirt from the ashen gray face that once shone golden like the sun, and brushed the tangles from limp pale hair.

Then the stolen Prince of Jötunheimr, reviled monster and traitor to Asgard, and King Under the Throne of Hliðskjálf, curled around his Brother’s head and cried.

**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Extras to follow


	3. Extras: After After Life

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _A departure from the overall mood and tone of the main story for sure. Almost like a footnote made in jest this extra be. Stop reading if you want the previous ending to remain 100% valid._
> 
>  
> 
> _Also not in chronological order._  
> 

“Pass the salt,” Loki held out his hand.

“I would Brother, had I still hands and arms,” Thor said in exasperation as he chewed on a piece of fish, fed by the niece he never knew he had.

“Oh! ‘Had I still hands and arms,’ he says! ‘Confound my disabled state,’ he says! ‘Do something about it, Brother,’ he says! Well no one heard my complaints as my head floated down a river of knives bound for Hel! No one heard my cries when my body wandered listlessly lost amidst the cursed corpses of Náströnd! And where were you Brother? Oh where were you, when I was left powerless without my magic, and sat a catatonic invalid in my daughter’s house, my consciousness escaping me for days on end? Benefiting from my death and suffering upon your high and haughty throne, no doubt! A god-King made ever brighter by the contrast of my shadows, just as the true Æsir Prince was made golden by his never-worthy Brother!” Loki hurled down his cutlery and pointed an accusing finger at his Brother’s head.

Thor choked on his mouthful of fish, “No doubt Asgard benefited from your services, Brother. But not a moment gone by was I not tortured with our separation and your cruel fate! I even came to Hel’s river’s shores to look for you! Why did you insult the court and seek your own death, when I kneeled before Father, begging for your life? Did you wish to part from me so, that you would throw away your own life? And what means you by your consciousness escaping you? Were you there with me after all? Your true self instead of a pale memory reflected in the enchanted head? Did your soul return to the world of the living to aid me then and again? Was it truly your presence I felt, instead of the delusions of my half-mad mind?”

“Part from you so? Going back to accursed Asgard to aid you? Don’t be so full of yourself Thor! Why I - ” Loki raged, two spots of colour darkening his pale cheeks.

“Father! Uncle! Control yourselves. No need to force our family melodrama upon the entire court please. And Father, do mind your temper, last time you got so worked up, your head fell off and rolled away. It is hard work sewing it back on you know,” Hela admonished, her tone long-suffering. 

“Please do not agitate the Queen’s Father so. He is merely stressed by his labours in building you a compatible body. And please eat your vegetables, my lord,” Járnsaxa said from where he sat on the other side of Thor’s head. He then speared an extra-large chunk of lettuce onto his fork, and stuffed it into the Thunderer’s mouth with far more force than necessary. It was honourable of the man to return the Casket to Jötunheimr. But then he had to turn around and become such a poor Father to Járnsaxa’s poor baby boys. Why Loki still held the man in such high regard was beyond Járnsaxa’s comprehension. Perhaps the humans had a point with Stockholm syndrome and mutually abusive relationships.

Thor’s head looked to be close to tears, whether he was moved by Loki’s efforts at restoring him, even after all that had happened between them in life, or he was choking badly on the lettuce, we would never know.

**

“- but to dine with you? Are you sure of it, Niece? I imagine I must still be hated by many of your subjects, who were felled by Æsir swords, many even by my own hands,” Thor’s head had asked of Hel.

“The Jötnar are both a tricky people, and straightforward when they wish. They already took their pound of flesh from you. Loki dines with me does he not? And he was the stolen son who directed the Bifröst upon his own brethren and forefathers. My halls were filled with ravaged souls that day so to the brim, that an extra wing had to be constructed to host them. Trust me when I say this, Uncle, Father was in much worse shape when I first found him. How did you think he came by so much knowledge about frost giant ball games?” Hela said as she filed her nails.

“Yet Father was forgiven for he gave Niflheimr a ruler and stability while he was alive. And you were both forgiven for the Odinsons did what the Father would not, and gave a realm back its frozen heart. You were harsh in your rule, and my Father by your house was ill-abused, but the both of you held the realms together well enough.”

At this Thor wondered how much of his Brother he did not know. Silver-Tongue, Lie-Smith, coward and traitor he was called. But Thor never knew of this Queen he’d raised, and never heard of how a god of Chaos once brought order to the realm of the dead for the sake of one girl.

“Wait, what means you by the Odinsons? My Brother had long been dead when the Casket was returned-”

But Hela only winked at him, and picked up his head with her good hand. “Afternoon walky time, Uncle dearest,” she sing-song’ed.

**

“So the Jötnar here have forgiven my Brother? He sits with you and dines with you and converses with you all as friends do,” Thor asked Járnsaxa one day.

“In a manner of speaking, yes,” Járnsaxa glanced up at the dead King’s head sitting on the library table. 

“While initially we decided to condemn the traitor who turned the Bifröst upon his own people to eternal torment, we pretty quickly realized someone had to actually execute said torment. It was fun and satisfactory at first, but got dreadfully tedious very fast. It was a lot of work devising torture day after day for all of eternity. Plus, Loki was the one who figured out how to steal satellite signals and got the internet working both ways.”

“And Hela didn’t look too happy. She is the only person here who could actually torture people without lifting a finger, and she has inherited her Father’s sadism and creativity as well as his good looks,” Járnsaxa explained over his book.

“Ah…” Thor’s head said.

When Járnsaxa made to pick up the head to go for afternoon tea, he almost dropped it, as the Thunderer exclaimed belatedly but loudly, in that slow fashion of his, “Wait, good looks?! Járnsaxa, though I am remorseful for your fate at my hands, I would know your intentions toward my Brother!”

Thor spent afternoon tea time in the library trash can that day.

**

“The new body was supposed to be a surprise, Járnsaxa. Now Father has something more to rave about, and Uncle became all but insufferable in his imitation of a hopeful and decapitated puppy,” Hela complained.

“Dreadfully sorry my lady,” Járnsaxa said ingenuinely. Finally he’d managed to get the áss off his back and fully focused on his Brother. The endless useless apologies and meaningless platitudes were getting quite annoying, especially since Thor managed to looked so sincere.

**

“Why a new body? Have you forgiven me for my transgressions, Brother?” Thor’s head asked, as he lay next to Loki on the latter’s gray silk pillow.

“Forgive? Nay. There are too many slights, however imagined you think them to be, for me to forgive. But you were the only person who spoke up for me in the end,” Loki whispered to his Brother’s head, his caresses upon the god’s ashen face light as the brush of a magpie’s feathers.

**

_And pretend this segment doesn’t even exist please:_

“Oh yes. Yes! Don’t you dare stop, Thor! Yes lick deeper, deeper!” Loki moaned, his Brother’s head held between his trembling thighs, his hands twisted into the gray silken sheets below him.

But just as they were both getting to the good part, Loki’s legs parted and shook in reflex after Thor added some teeth to the task at head (yes head), and the poor unfortunate Thunderer slipped from the precarious hold and rolled off the bed.

“Ow!” Thor’s head winced as his nose landed on the floor first.

“Damn and confound it all to Hel!” Loki cursed in frustration.

**

_And this segment doesn’t exist either:_

 

Above the abode of the dead, the worlds of the living burned as the Tree started to fold upon itself.

**


	4. Paint Practice

Járnsaxa  


Menglöð  



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